


Into This Breathing World

by Gileonnen



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare, Richard III - Shakespeare
Genre: Dodgy Architecture, Dodgy History, Latin Quotations, Multi, Oneiromantic Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's none else by: Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into This Breathing World

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to LaReineNoire for beta-reading and feedback. Written for Elviaprose in the 2009 Histories Ficathon.

Richard's first friend is a servant, he thinks--a quick-eyed, narrow-fingered boy who steals into the princess's gardens when the boughs are heavy with blossoms and the thickets leaf-roughened. He has a beautiful way of crouching under the roses when he wishes to hear secrets, his fingers spread upon the dark earth and his shoulders rounded to give him the shape of a stone. When the boy conceals himself, he can hide impossibly well; were it not for his bright eyes, Richard might never have seen him at all.

"Wha's thy name?" he asks, getting to his knees so that he might meet the stranger-boy's eyes.

"Not thy business," the boy answers, although he's smiling. "But 'tis Richard."

"'Tis mine!" cries Richard; the boy shushes him at once, and Richard crawls beneath the rose to join him. "Richard of Bordeaux."

"Thou'rt surely a noble knight, then," says the other Richard, with such a great show of sincerity that Richard likes him immediately. "I should like such a knight in my keeping."

The boy might be a gardener's son, or a thief's, or a lord's; at that moment Richard is willing to follow him as though he were God's. "Wha's thy coat of arms, that I may wear it?"

"A tricky one, of many parts--the king's arms, and a label argent of three points ermine, on each point canton gules--but say, none of that." He reaches up over their heads, through the thick thorns, to twist free a rose and tuck it into Richard's hair. "Call it only the white rose of the House of York."

"I've not heard of the House of York," says Richard. "Is't in a fairy-land?"

The other Richard laughs softly, his quick eyes fixed on the well-dressed maidens who slip into the garden with their fine skirts trailing over the frosted ground. "Ay, like to be, an thou dost know it not. Hist; they will speak anon."

Richard tries to match the other boy's pose, spreading his palms upon the earth and training his gaze upon the ladies and their bone-white hands. He sees their fingers flutter like moth-wings; their eyes meet as if by chance, and then turn away again. Their dark lips draw thin, thin, thin--he shudders, feeling a sudden, cold heaviness in his stomach. It feels as though he has swallowed a stone. Although he can hear only whispers, he knows at once that something terrible has happened.

He knows what that terrible thing is.

It is January, and not high summer. There are no roses among the thorns.

"Thy brother's dead," says the dark-eyed boy; he says it as though losing a brother is a fearful thing, like losing one's way in the wood. "And thy father soon to follow--and then thou wilt be king."

* * *

It doesn't trouble Richard that no one else can see his friend. Richard (the other Richard) is older and cleverer, and he is very good at hiding.

* * *

"There is an old man's saw," says Richard, as he contemplates an apple in search of the reddest flesh. "A saying about the merit of a child-king."

From his pillow, the child-king answers with his eyes half-closed, " _Vae tibi terra cuius rex est puer, et cuius principes mane comedunt_. But 'tis an apple in thy hand."

"Am I a prince, that I should not eat in the morning?" Richard asks. His narrow fingers close over the ripe curve of the fruit as though it is a weapon or a talisman; he clutches it as the cardinals clutch their crosses. In the soft light of morning, the king sees that his other hand is gloved and wonders whether it was gloved when they were boys together.

"Thou'rt a dream, I think," he answers, finally. "I did dream thee as a child."

"Dost dream me as a child," laughs Richard, and he laughs harder when the king frowns to hear it. "Ah! His highness curls his lip at me, to make me smart--bend thy little bow, Cupid; 'tis a boy's vengeance for a slight."

"Yet little bows may strike the heart full surely," says the king (and although his lip is trembling, he schools his voice to smoothness), "And if we are Cupid in form, we are Jupiter in truth."

Richard the elder is still laughing, softly, his eyes fixed upon the sunrise. He has aged since they last spoke; they have both aged, but the years have made Richard _old_. Although he is still young, is back is bent--Richard tries to remember whether the other boy had ever stood just so in his youth, with his shoulders sloped and his head tucked low to keep his laugh a secret. For all that, his is a handsome face, and his eyes are clever and dark.

"Say what manner of Jupiter thou wouldst be," Richard calls over his shoulder. "How thou wouldst rule--"

"As would our uncle rule," says Richard, "For he knows thy saw, as well."

"Then take care," Richard says. He steps lightly over the sweet rushes on the floor, tucking his apple into the young king's hand. "Take care, my knight--for as old men say, _quanto tempore hæres parvulus est, nihil differt a servo, cum sit dominus omnium._ Thine uncle may love thee less, an he loves England better."

"I am England," says Richard. As the young man stands over him, though, he feels very small. His eyes are sleep-crusted, and the apple is firm and heavy in his hand. "We are England."

"We will be," Richard answers, with a peculiar smile. "An God smiles upon villains, and brother dreads brother--ay, we will be."

Richard wakes with his hand empty, although his pillow smells of apples on a warm autumn morning.

* * *

Along the shore, fragments of planking and rope still lie amid the stones; the storm has washed them too high for the simple tide to draw back to sea again, and even the diligent peasants of England have not combed their shore to smoothness. Fishermen have claimed what ropes they can untangle, their rough fingers working patiently at the salt-crusted knots, and boys canvassing the shoreline for a princess's treasure have come away with bits of wood for their hearths. Nothing now remains but that which was unwanted--which is enough. "An inauspicious start," remarks Richard, kicking at a pile of splintered pegs. "Thou'lt repent of thy wife before the year is out."

"'Tis no ill omen, to be plucked up from the storm and delivered to a king," replies Richard, and he must be smiling like a madman, because the older man laughs at him outright. "Never did man love woman as--"

"As thou lovest the good Queen Anne, whose eyes compass heaven in their spheres?" He raises his brows; it is cruel of him, thinks Richard, although he says nothing untrue. "Mine own Anne heard that tune, ere I did wed, and now I do repent the singing sore."

"Didst call but to bring the bird to hand, that thou may'st have her at thy table," says Richard; the other man regards him coolly a moment, and answers, "So do all lords who sweetly speak of love."

They sit together upon a large, smooth stone, where the seafoam breaks gently against the rock. The two are of a height, now, although the king is more slender and has only the faintest touch of hair upon his chin. The duke taps his bare fingers on his knee, and whether it is from impatience or infinite patience, Richard cannot say with certainty. "I've heard thee lately speak such words of love," he says significantly. "Of he whose soul was lately joined with thine--"

"Not one word more," snaps Richard; his face is hot and his hands are clenched at his sides before he realizes that he has gotten to his feet. "Thou knowest not what love I bear for him, nor how I tender it--"

"Let priests and servingwomen name thy sins," Richard answers, shrugging and stretching out his feet to let the waves lap at them. "Thy folly's name is Robert."

"Because his station is a lowly one, when held against mine own--they think I mean to make all beggars lords, and beggar them by it. Maugre his rank, he is a nobler man than I." He sits again, slowly, closing his eyes against the expression of derision on Richard's face. He remembers Robert's head upon his lap, the tensing of his throat when he swallowed; it is no sin, he thinks, to find a man beautiful when his head is in one's lap. It is no sin to love him for that beauty.

When the silence stretches long, Richard begins to think that his companion has vanished into the ocean air. His voice, when it comes, is startling-sharp and low. "All men are noble, when love makes them so," mutters Richard, as though to himself.

He has never sounded more sincere, or more alone.

* * *

The walls and wards of Pontefract Castle catch the light in a particular way that Richard finds charming. Perhaps he likes the glimpses of green on the outer bailey, all richly overlaid with shadows and split with sun-drenched stone; perhaps he only appreciates the hard, angular fixity of the shadows upon the walls of the keep. A keep, after all, is not merely an instrument for war--it is a graceful object, a kind of sculpture in the king's image. _See, these manifold stones are your subjects; the height represents your majesty, the breadth your puissance. It was the image of your father's father, and your father's father's father, and your ..._

"A glorious summer," says Richard, voice quiet, his fingers curled over the edge of a great stone. His namesake smiles as though the king has told a joke. "I know not when I saw so fine a summer."

"When hast thou seen its like?" asks Richard. He leans closer; he knows that the question is cruel. "When wilt thou see its like again?"

"On Judgment Day, I wist, for on that day I've heard that kings are beggars, beggars kings."

"This beggar's made a king," says Richard wryly. "We are King Richard, third king of that name." He turns to Richard the Second, lips twisting a little in something like a smile. "Ask not what coin so poor a man could pay."

"Thy currency is thy friends, thy soul, and thy self. Such is the price that all men pay for the crown, in fee or in debt." He laughs, but gently; they know one another too well by now to criticize each other's sins. "Come, put thy hand in mine, and walk with me. 'Tis summer, fit for melancholy kings."

Richard takes the offered hand, tucking his gloved fingers into Richard's palm. His quick eyes are lined and deeply shadowed, but his smile still speaks of secrets heard and kept. "I'd make thee melancholy with a word," he says. "Three words, and thou wouldst never gambol more, here--"

"Then say those three, that we may walk anon."

Richard lets go of his hand, fitting his gloved fingers instead against Richard's cheek. The leather is use-roughened, the fingers stiff inside them (one of the fingers of the glove is stuffed with wood and lambswool, but it feels like all the others at this moment).

Richard's lips are as dry and wry-twisted in kissing as they are in mockery.

* * *

The lanterns cast a fragile brightness over the sea, like narrow pathways paved with shards of light. At the ship's prow lies England; astern, Ireland is asleep. Richard wonders whether he might step onto that shining water and tread silently away to the Holy Land, or Avalon, or the bottom of the sea.

"Young Richmond may kill me tomorrow," says a familiar voice, and Richard half-smiles to hear it. He knows that easy irony, that note of invincible good humour--a thousand death-knells could not disguise it. "I am thy fatal meteor; I brought thee tidings of Edward's death, and Robert's, and Anne's."

"And mine."

"And mine, an a Henry does a Richard kill." Richard turns his face into the wind, drawing in a breath laced with salt and sulfur. "Is the scent of Hell upon the air? Methinks I do smell Hell; 'tis close to hand--"

"The water only, close as earth," answers Richard.

For a long moment, the two men stand hunched at the rail, their eyes seeking something far away. It is, Richard observes with odd detachment, the first time that they have ever been the same age. His bones ache awfully--but perhaps that is only the sea air.

Finally, Richard licks his thin lips. "I saw their shadows," he says, soft as breath. "They did speak the murders I had done, and mock me that murdered them, and curse the brother that loved them once ... is there no creature on earth loves Richard now?"

Their hands meet on the rail.

It's answer enough.


End file.
